Chapter Thirteen
‘Stop pacing.’ Flinty peered at her over the top of her magazine. ‘You’re as ready as you can be.’
‘We’ve only got four whisks.’
‘Which is why you’re having them work in pairs.’
‘Is that OK though? Will people expect to be doing all their own thing?’
Flinty put the magazine down. ‘It’s a trial run. They all know that. They know you’re ironing out the kinks.’
‘So it is a kink? The working in pairs thing?’
‘When you’re properly up and running people will mostly come with a friend won’t they? So they’ll probably prefer it anyway.’
Bella wasn’t sure about that at all.
‘Seriously, stop pacing pet. You’re ready.’
‘Am I?’
‘You’ve put the sign up for where to park?’
Bella nodded. ‘Where’s Dipper?’ The vision of a very excitable Labrador bounding into the kitchen and deciding to ‘help’ popped into her head.
‘Spending the day with Hugh and Queen Latifah. She’ll be spoiled rotten.’
‘Maybe I should check the ingredients?’
‘You’ve checked a million times,’ Flinty pointed out. ‘Unless someone’s crept past us in the last ten minutes and eaten a whole bag of raw potatoes, you’re fine.’
‘Sorry.’ Bella sat herself down. ‘I really want this to go well. Like, this would be a proper business. I’d be making a proper contribution, you know.’
Flinty nodded. ‘That matters to you, doesn’t it?’
‘’Course.’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why does it matter? I mean I’m not being rude pet, but this isn’t your loss is it? If this place was sold. You’ve only been here ten minutes. You’d move on. Might even help Adam move on too.’
Bella felt herself tense. This was just another version of Veronica’s talk about how she didn’t belong here. She was doing everything she could. There was a problem here – the estate needed to generate more income – and Bella could help to solve it. That was what mattered. ‘I want to help.’
‘Fair enough.’ Flinty’s tone suggested she didn’t entirely think that was the whole explanation.
‘I want to be helpful.’ That was closer to it. ‘And Adam belongs here, doesn’t he?’
Flinty shrugged. ‘Right now I suspect he’d turn the clock back and slip into his life in Edinburgh in a heartbeat if he could.’
No. Adam belonged here. She’d seen it when he’d explained to her about the link between the castle and the village. ‘He’s just struggling a bit at the moment.’
‘Aye. Well I’m sure you know best.’ Bella already felt she knew Flinty well enough to doubt that. She didn’t think Flinty had ever thought anyone else had known best about anything.
Bella’s phone vibrated with a message from her nan. Still in Somerset, debating a jaunt down to Cornwall, or possibly over to France, depending on whether she could beg a lift down to Dover in time to meet the friend of a friend who was catching the ferry.
Bella tapped back the quickest of quick replies.
Still in Scotland. Tomorrow the world x
She stuffed her phone into her pocket and looked at Flinty. How to head off another round of questions about her intentions towards Lowbridge? ‘Anyway, what about you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean…’ Was she pushing her luck here? ‘Adam said you’d retired but you’re here every day. Veronica and Darcy would barely manage to boil the kettle without you.’
‘Ah well…’
‘Ah well?’
‘Well I’ve given it this long.’ Flinty looked momentarily reflective but the moment passed and her usual business-like expression returned. ‘Anyway by the time you’ve finished with them today they’ll both be domestic goddesses, won’t they?’
Bella laughed. ‘They’d better behave.’
‘They’re much better in company. Usually.’
By the time her first eight students had gathered, Bella had read her plan for the day three more times and checked her ingredients twice. She was ready. Or if she wasn’t, it was too late to worry about it now. She looked around the gathered faces. Darcy full of excitement and anticipation. Veronica reserved but not actually looking as though she was chewing a wasp. Pavel, the only bloke, quiet but attentive in contrast to Jill’s buzzy butterfly chit-chat. The two women Nina had roped in from parents and toddlers were both young, and introduced themselves as sisters, Molly and Katy. ‘We bunked off home ec at school,’ Katy told her.
‘And our mum’s an awful cook.’
‘The health visitor says learning to cook’s good for the little ones though.’
Molly nodded at her sister’s comment. ‘Otherwise they grow up on chips and dino nuggets. And that’s no good.’
‘You grew up on dino nuggets,’ Katy pointed out.
‘Yeah. And I got pregnant when I was still at school.’
‘That wasn’t cos of the nuggets. That was cos you can’t keep your knickers on.’
‘She’s smug cos she were engaged before she got up the duff.’
Her sister laughed. ‘Only about twenty minutes before though.’
‘So anyway we want to learn to make stuff that doesn’t come out of the freezer.’
‘Do your partners cook?’ Bella asked.
Both girls squealed with laughter. And then Molly gasped. ‘You should do a course for them though. Cooking for useless dads.’
‘And useless lads.’
Bella made a mental note. That actually wasn’t a terrible idea.
The other two women, who’d been roped in by Jill from her congregation in Locharron, both said they cooked a little bit, but were stuck in a rut of the same five or six meals they did again and again. Figuring those were the two who probably had the least risk of setting fire to their own hair or baking the mixing spoon in with their dessert batter, Bella decided that when it came to time to move some of the group into the smaller prep kitchen those were the pair who could most safely be left unsupervised.
She took a deep breath. ‘Hello everyone! Thank you for coming. I’m Bella and this is the very first session at the Highland Cookery School. Thank you for being my guinea pigs. At the end of the day I’d really appreciate it if you could fill in the feedback forms we give you and that’ll help us plan how to get this business properly started.’
She invited the group to introduce themselves and tried to remind herself of all the names as they did so. Molly and Katy were shaping up to be quite the comedy double act. Claire and Cath, the women from Jill’s church, were friendly and down to earth. Jill introduced herself breezily. She seemed to know everyone already, and had greeted everybody with a hearty hug when she arrived. Even Veronica, who had been wholly horrified by the experience.
Pavel was next. ‘Hi everyone. I’m Pav. I think I know most people.’
Claire nodded enthusiastically. ‘Pavel did my fitted wardrobes.’
‘I did. I’m here because I rely on my mother far too much for home-cooked meals and it would be nice to be able to make something for her for a change.’
The massed ranks of the women in the room let out a small collective ‘Aw.’ Bella had absolutely no idea how Pavel was still single. It seemed like pretty much everyone in the western Highlands would happily ditch whatever partner they had in his favour in a heartbeat.
That left the two Lady Lowbridges. Darcy jumped in first. ‘Hi. I’m Lady Lowbridge, but you all call me Darcy. Now my daddy was a great cook back home. He worked in a diner and he used to say he made the best damn steak sandwich in Manhattan, so he was the cook at home and then…’ Her voice tailed off. ‘I don’t know. Alexander wasn’t really big into food and I like to watch my weight so…’ She shrugged.
The group fell silent. Bella nodded at Veronica. ‘And you?’
‘I’m Veronica, Lady Lowbridge. Good morning everyone.’
That seemed to be all they were going to get out of Veronica. ‘All right then. Well, welcome everybody. We’re going to be making three courses today, and they’re all recipes you can take away and make on their own or as part of the whole meal.’ She handed around the menu sheets she’d printed out, with Highland Cookery School at the top in neat italics. ‘First off then we have pinwheels, which sounds fancy but is basically a little pastry savoury biscuit thing. If it’s a dinner party you could serve those as canapés with drinks when your guests arrive or with some salad leaves as a starter. And by making those we’ll learn to make rough puff pastry, which you can then use again and again for pies and tarts.’
She glanced around the room. People were listening and nobody looked quite ready to run for the hills yet.
‘Then main course will be fish pie with wilted spinach. So that includes a bit of fish cookery, and we’ll make a white sauce and a really lovely creamy mashed potato. And you can add more veg into this recipe if you choose to, so great for getting kids to eat their vegetables.’
The two young mums nodded approvingly.
The next stage of Bella’s introduction was a little more Lowbridge specific. ‘And the fish pie has black pepper in it, so when we get to that point you will see that…’ She opened a cupboard and pulled out a pepper grinder. ‘All the pepper grinders have these neon stickers on them so they’re easy to spot.’
Her students exchanged bemused glances.
In for a penny, Bella thought. ‘One of the joys of cooking at somewhere like Lowbridge Castle is that you’re in a kitchen that’s been in use for hundreds of years. That means that we are…’ She couldn’t quite believe she was saying this. ‘Apparently, haunted. And one of our ghosts, Poppy, does enjoy hiding the pepper. She’s harmless apart from that but do please keep an eye on your seasonings.’
Fortunately this warning was met with laughter rather than horror. Bella pressed on.
‘And then for dessert, a classic chocolate fudge cake. So this is a spin on a basic cake recipe, which is something every cook should have, but we’re going to posh it up a bit with ganache icing so you can heat it up for thirty seconds in the microwave when you get home and serve it as a warm fudge cake.’
‘Oooh!’ Jill sounded delighted. ‘I love chocolate.’
Everyone loved chocolate. That was very much why Bella had chosen it. And across the meal she’d got in a good range of skills for her students to have a go at, but nothing, she hoped, that wouldn’t be achievable in the time available. She wanted everyone to go home, not only with an edible meal, but also with a sense of achievement and enthusiasm for cooking more. She clapped her hands together to curtail the chocolate chit-chat. ‘Right. First up, puff pastry. We’re going to be making rough puff, which is a little bit more straightforward than doing it the fancy way, and honestly it comes out just as good.’
She started her demo round, reminding herself to work in order and talk through what she was doing as she did it. ‘The most important ingredient in any puff pastry is cold. As soon as things get too warm your pastry will start sticking and you won’t be able to roll it out. That’s why we’re starting the pastry first, even though the pinwheels won’t go in the oven until much later. We’re going to roll and turn and roll and turn and then pop it in the fridge and do something else, and then come back for another round of rolling and turning. Basically every time you finish a task during the day, I want you to go and check on your pastry, and if it’s cold enough, give it another roll and another turn.’
She set everyone to make their pastry dough and do their first roll and turn. Veronica and Darcy were sent to the second prep kitchen, or scullery as Flinty called it. Bella had a moment of pleasure at the thought of banishing Veronica to the scullery. Claire and Cath went to work in the bakery. Flinty went with them and, straight away, having another person who knew their way around a rolling pin proved invaluable as they both moved from station to station unsticking too warm pastry from worktops and stopping over enthusiastic hands from dropping in tablespoons of salt where only half-teaspoons were required.
By the time everyone’s pastry was in the fridge and the group had reassembled for their second lesson, Bella was still pretty much on schedule and starting to relax into her role. Potato preparation was dull. There was no way around that, but Bella did her best to frame it as a basic kitchen skill that everyone should have, and as a chance to develop and hone your knife skills. Good knife skills were an absolute foundation of confident – but also safe – cooking. And her kitchen knives – carefully wrapped and stowed in Adam’s hold luggage – had made the journey from Spain to Scotland with her. She talked the group quickly through the basic set.
‘What knives should we have at home?’ Pavel asked.
‘He’s happy now he can buy himself something shiny,’ Jill joked.
‘You don’t need all of these. A good chef’s knife, as big as you can comfortably work with, is the main thing. That’s the most versatile, and if you get a decent one and look after it, it’ll last you for years. Decades even.’ Bella smiled at the impressed ‘ooh’ sound that came from the group and she swiped her blade across her sharpening steel. She held up the steel. ‘With that in mind, worth buying one of these as well. You can start slowly with it.’ She demonstrated the movement at a quarter of her normal pace. ‘But a sharp knife is much, much safer in your hand than a blunt one.’
The group started peeling and chopping their potatoes and putting them to boil in salted water. Bella took a stroll around their different stations to see who remembered what to do next. Claire and Cath were definitely her star pupils. As soon as the potatoes were in the pan Claire was wiping the bench down and Cath was collecting their pastry squares from the fridge for another round of rolling out.
Katy and Molly were just as enthusiastic but noticeably less skilled. ‘Is this right miss?’
‘You can call me Bella,’ she laughed, peering at the pair’s pastry square. ‘It looks OK.’
‘It’s all lumpy though.’
Bella took the rolling pin and gently pressed the dough. ‘Oh, so it is.’ She prodded with her fingertip and scanned the ingredients left on the worktop. ‘You’ve still got your butter left.’
Molly gaped. ‘Then what did we put in the pastry? We cut it into little cubes like you said.’
The little cubes were, on closer inspection, poking through the dough. Bella stifled a giggle. ‘That’s cheese.’
Both girls’ faces fell.
‘It’s OK.’
‘It’s not,’ said Katy. ‘I said it felt too hard.’
‘We did bad!’ exclaimed her sister.
‘Nothing to worry about. Look. Why don’t you roll out my pastry? It’s mostly spare. I’ll just have to nick it back at the end when I show people how to roll the wheels.’
Molly looked crestfallen. ‘Are we the worst you’ve ever taught?’
Bella considered her answer. ‘Well it’s my very first lesson. I’m sure I’ll have much much worse next time,’ she lied. ‘Everyone makes mistakes. It’s how we learn.’
‘I bet most people know the difference between cheese and butter though,’ Katy pointed out.
Bella left them to it, and popped the kettle on for their mid-morning refreshments, to be served with the pinwheels she’d made the night before, so everyone could see what they were aiming for. Flinty came up next to her with a tray of cups and a plate for the pinwheels. ‘Are you warming the pastries?’
Bella shook her head. They could try their own creations warm at the end of the day and she wanted to show that the recipe was versatile enough to be made ahead.
‘It’s going very well. Even Veronica and Darcy are getting along.’
Bella had to admit that she’d been slightly avoiding checking on the Lady Lowbridges. ‘Sorry. I sort of left them with you, didn’t I?’
‘That’s all right. I know how to handle them. But they were fine. I mean Darcy was doing all the work but they weren’t shouting at each other so I think it’s going wonderfully.’
‘I wondered about splitting them up, but everyone else seemed to pair up naturally.’
‘I wondered if you’d put the vicar with one of them.’
Bella had wondered about that too. ‘I didn’t think she’d thank me for being separated from sexy Pavel.’
Flinty grinned. ‘You noticed that as well. She’s sweet on him, isn’t she?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘He hasn’t got a clue, has he?’
‘Not the slightest,’ Bella agreed.
‘Poor lass.’ Flinty found the box of pinwheels in the fridge and set about laying them out on the plate. ‘Unrequited love can be terrible,’ she added.
Bella had saved what she knew would be everyone’s favourite activity of the day for the next session. The idea was that they’d do something really fun before lunch so everyone would be hyped up and enthusiastic about coming back after the break. It was time for chocolate cake.
As she’d anticipated, mixing together the rich chocolate batter seemed to be balm for every soul in the room. She’d toyed with the idea of using a basic sponge mix, but decided in the end to go for something a little more elevated, so this batter included cocoa but also melted chocolate and generous spoons full of soured cream which gave an unctuous moisture to the finished cake and cut through the richness enough to allow you to go back for a second slice. The final little fancy addition to the mix was to separate the eggs, incorporate the yolks first and then whip up the whites before folding in the soft fluffy clouds to create the perfect balance of richness and lightness in the final cake.
Bella loved this recipe. She’d created this final version herself as an amalgam of different recipes she’d found over the years. It was, in her eyes, the ultimate chocolate cake, and sharing it with her little group was actually making her feel quite emotional. It took her back to cooking with her grandma and seeing her nan’s pride when Bella completed a task. She realised now that pride had come not only from Bella’s achievement, but from the joy of sharing her own knowledge and love of food with someone eager to learn.
By lunchtime, the whole group were, as Bella had planned, having fun and enthusing loudly about their achievements. Well, Veronica wasn’t exactly enthusing, but her lips were 10 per cent less pursed than the norm and she hadn’t retreated to take her lunch on a tray somewhere far away from the chatter and boisterousness of the dining room. Bella thought she could probably allow herself to relax just a little bit.
Bella was wrong.
The afternoon session started well. The group had got along well over the lunch break and even Veronica had been lured into polite small talk with Pavel, who seemed to be able to charm the birds from the trees.
The first task for the afternoon, while chocolate cakes baked in the oven, was to prepare the filling for the fish pies. That was where things started to go a little awry. Bella was in the bakery with Cath and Claire when she heard the yelp of pain from the main kitchen. She dashed back through to find Jill clutching her hand, with blood oozing between her fingers. ‘I’m fine!’ she announced.
Bella dashed over and inspected Jill’s hand. It was just a nick. All her fingers were happily still firmly attached, but the cut was relatively deep. Flinty appeared at her shoulder. ‘Oh, that might need looking at,’ she declared cheerfully. ‘Have you had all your tetanus jabs?’
Jill paled slightly. ‘I don’t know.’
At the other side of the kitchen Molly and Katy stared wide-eyed. ‘The minor injuries clinic at Locharron is open on weekends,’ Katy said. ‘We had to take Betsy there last month when she fell down a hole.’
Molly nodded. ‘It was quite a big hole.’
Bella put all the questions that raced into her head about who on earth Betsy was and how/why/where she’d come to fall down a hole to one side. ‘Well let’s get a dressing on it for now.’
Flinty was already brandishing a first aid kit. ‘I’ll just pop something on it and I’ll drive you over there, love.’
Jill bit her lip. ‘I’m so sorry! I can drive myself. No need to make a fuss.’
She clearly couldn’t drive herself, but Bella couldn’t leave.
‘I’m taking you,’ Flinty insisted. She directed Jill over to a stool in the corner and set about unwrapping the wad of kitchen roll Jill was pressing to her hand.
‘Oh.’ The noise Pavel made was not a happy healthy one.
Bella spun back to check what was going on, and for a moment the kitchen seemed to shift into slow motion. She could see exactly what was about to happen but there was no way she could intervene. Pavel’s face had gone extremely white and a shimmer of sweat shone across his top lip. He rocked slightly, and started to open his mouth. No sound came out, and then he was falling, rocking at first front to back and then straight down like a tower block detonated for demolition.
Bella darted forward but she was too slow. The castle kitchen was large for a domestic kitchen, but not large for a man the size of Pavel Stone to collapse without a certain amount of collateral damage. The bowl of melted chocolate in front of him was the first casualty. That sent the whisk spinning up into the air, from where it hit Jill’s water glass, which toppled down onto the floor, taking the pepper grinder with it. That distracted Bella from what was happening on Pavel’s other side where his fall had dislodged a tea towel, which flicked towards the still-lighted gas ring. A second later flames danced upwards from the stove top.
For a second everyone was quiet apart from a single mournful, ethereal sneeze.
‘What the—?’ gasped Molly.
‘What on earth is—?’ Veronica appeared in the doorway. ‘Oh my goodness.’
Time slowed and elongated giving Bella a moment to take in every different element of the catastrophe. The blood. The flames. Pavel’s bulk prone on the floor. The broken glass. The spatter pattern of melted chocolate giving the whole room the appearance of an unusually tasty crime scene. Bella was seconds away from screaming.
‘Right,’ Veronica’s tone was suddenly brisk, as she surveyed the room. ‘You!’ She pointed to Bella. ‘Turn that gas off.’
Of course. Bella moved on autopilot and did as she was told while Veronica barked out more instructions. ‘You girls, grab a tea towel and soak it in water and throw it over here.’
Molly and Katy did exactly as they were told.
‘Darcy, help me get this chap flat on the floor and then see if you can hold his feet up.’
By the time Bella had clicked out of her panic, Pavel had his eyes open, Jill’s finger was dressed and being held aloft by Flinty, the flames licking the kitchen wall had been extinguished and Cath and Claire were cleaning up the debris from the floor, and joking cheerfully about how they were happy to lick the chocolate off Pavel’s torso, purely to be helpful, of course. Veronica surveyed the scene and then clapped her hands. ‘All right then. How are you feeling now, young man?’
Pavel pushed himself up on his elbows. ‘I am very well.’ He smiled slightly sheepishly. ‘Apart from feeling a little silly.’
Cath laughed. ‘A big lump like you can’t cope with a bit of blood.’
‘I’ll be bruised in the morning, but right now I’m OK.’ He nodded at Darcy, who was still holding his feet up in the air. ‘I think you can let go now.’
Ten minutes later Jill had been packed off with Flinty in the Land Rover to the clinic in Locharron, shouting reassurances that it was only a scratch and absolutely nobody’s fault but her own, and it seemed as though the only non-recoverable loss was a bowl of half-melted chocolate.
‘OK. Well, what do you want to do?’ Bella found that she was asking Veronica, who seemed to have transformed from reserved lady who was attending under duress to the person in charge. ‘Should we carry on?’
‘I would say so. I’m sure everyone wants to keep going, don’t we?’
Bella was pretty sure that nobody would have dared argue, but the volley of nods seemed to be genuine. ‘What about you, Pavel? You’ve lost your partner.’
‘Let’s keep going. I can take her some cake tomorrow to make sure she’s OK. And I promised my mum I was bringing dinner.’
‘Well we’d better not let Nina down then.’ Bella took a deep breath to try to damp down the surge of adrenalin.
The rest of the afternoon went well. Everyone was very careful indeed every time they had to chop something, and Bella was very aware that she was running on nervous energy and hope, but her remaining students all completed their tasks and left clutching bowls of food and typed instructions for cooking or reheating at home.
Bella slumped into a stool at the island. They still had a mountain of wiping down and washing up to do. The standards of cleaning up as they went along had definitely declined a notch after the excitement of Jill’s injury and Pavel’s spectacular faint. But they had got through the day. Darcy came and sat next to her and slid a pile of papers onto the worktop between them. ‘I got them all to do the feedback forms.’
‘Oh. I completely forgot about that.’
Darcy shrugged. ‘Well I didn’t.’
A second later Veronica came back in, closely followed by Flinty. ‘Jill’s all patched up. I dropped her home. She said she’d ask Pavel to bring her over to pick her car up in the morning.’
‘Was she OK?’ Bella asked. For a second all the thoughts of what might have gone more badly wrong flashed through her head. Jill could have lost the tip of her finger. Pavel could have hit his head.
‘She’s right as rain. Embarrassed more than anything else.’
‘Not as embarrassed as that poor chap,’ Veronica noted, but there was an uncharacteristic smile in her tone. ‘He was fine in the end too though. What do all these forms Darcy made them do tell us?’
Bella couldn’t bear to look.
‘For goodness’ sake.’ Veronica pulled the pile of papers towards her and skimmed the first one. ‘People today really do have the most terrible handwriting.’
‘What do they say though?’ Darcy asked.
‘This one’s very complimentary.’ Veronica flicked to the next form in the stack. ‘And this one.’ She rifled through the papers. ‘All of them really. They enjoyed it. Would love to do it again. Thought it was fantastic value.’
‘You did tell them you were only charging them for ingredients didn’t you?’ Flinty asked.
Bella nodded.
‘These two both say they’d be happy to pay full price, and this one says you should do courses for men who don’t know anything.’ Veronica raised an eyebrow. ‘Let’s assume they mean about cooking.’
‘Was that a joke, Veronica?’ The question was out of Bella’s mouth before she could check herself.
‘I make lots of jokes,’ Veronica deadpanned back. ‘I’m an absolute barrel of laughs.’
Bella had to turn away from Darcy’s gaping expression to compose herself against the fit of disbelieving laughter that was rising in her chest.
‘Seems like it went very well, even after…’ Flinty waved a vague hand. ‘Everything.’
‘We should toast our success,’ Darcy announced.
‘Why not?’ Veronica agreed.
Adam pulled his silver four-wheel drive, newly liberated from the parking level at his flat in Edinburgh, to a stop outside the coach house. All he really wanted was to head straight into the coach house and collapse into bed, but the sound of voices from the castle courtyard pulled him through the gateway towards the noise. Flinty, his grandmother and his stepmother were squashed together onto the bench by the kitchen corridor door, and Bella was sitting cross-legged on the cobbles in front of them. All four of them were clutching champagne glasses and talking animatedly, and apparently companionably.
‘What are you doing out here?’
Veronica raised her glass in his direction and nodded towards Bella. ‘We’re toasting this young lady’s success.’
‘And the Highland Cookery School!’ added Darcy.
The first cooking lesson – Adam had completely forgotten. He probably ought to have texted or called his fiancée to wish her luck. He strolled over and planted a kiss on the top of Bella’s head. ‘That was today, wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah. Just the trial day. I think it went well though.’
‘Give or take a trip to hospital,’ Flinty muttered.
‘What?’
‘It was only a cut,’ Bella reassured him. ‘Jill cut her hand, but she’s fine now.’
‘Everything else was a triumph though,’ Veronica said, which was perhaps the highest praise he’d ever heard his grandmother heap onto anything.
‘Only because of you!’ Bella replied. ‘Seriously, your nan saved the day. When Jill cut herself and then Pavel fainted—’
‘And the place caught fire,’ Darcy interjected.
‘Yep. And the place caught fire, your nan was so calm. She got everyone doing what needed to be done. No fuss. No messing.’
‘But then it was Darcy who remembered the feedback forms at the end,’ Veronica demurred.
‘Which was really the main point of the day,’ said Flinty.
‘But Flinty was helping all day and it was her that got Jill to the doctor,’ Darcy pointed out.
Bella grinned. She looked so happy, so right and so in her element. ‘All in all we made a fantastic team.’
That was great. Bella was excited about making something of Lowbridge, and so far she was actually doing it. Of course she was. Bella should be inspiring him. Veronica and Darcy seemed, however implausible it appeared, to have buried the hatchet. Everyone was happy. Everyone was where they wanted to be.
Everyone else, at least.